And Minerva answered, “I will tell you truly and particularly all about it.  I am Mentes, son of Anchialus, and I am King of the Taphians.  I have come here with my ship and crew, on a voyage to men of a foreign tongue being bound for Temesa {4} with a cargo of iron, and I shall bring back copper.  As for my ship, it lies over yonder off the open country away from the town, in the harbour Rheithron {5} under the wooded mountain Neritum. {6} Our fathers were friends before us, as old Laertes will tell you, if you will go and ask him.  They say, however, that he never comes to town now, and lives by himself in the country, faring hardly, with an old woman to look after him and get his dinner for him, when he comes in tired from pottering about his vineyard.  They told me your father was at home again, and that was why I came, but it seems the gods are still keeping him back, for he is not dead yet not on the mainland.  It is more likely he is on some sea-girt island in mid ocean, or a prisoner among savages who are detaining him against his will.  I am no prophet, and know very little about omens, but I speak as it is borne in upon me from heaven, and assure you that he will not be away much longer; for he is a man of such resource that even though he were in chains of iron he would find some means of getting home again.  But tell me, and tell me true, can Ulysses really have such a fine looking fellow for a son?  You are indeed wonderfully like him about the head and eyes, for we were close friends before he set sail for Troy where the flower of all the Argives went also.  Since that time we have never either of us seen the other.”

“My mother,” answered Telemachus, “tells me I am son to Ulysses, but it is a wise child that knows his own father.  Would that I were son to one who had grown old upon his own estates, for, since you ask me, there is no more ill-starred man under heaven than he who they tell me is my father.”

And Minerva said, “There is no fear of your race dying out yet, while Penelope has such a fine son as you are.  But tell me, and tell me true, what is the meaning of all this feasting, and who are these people?  What is it all about?  Have you some banquet, or is there a wedding in the family—­for no one seems to be bringing any provisions of his own?  And the guests—­how atrociously they are behaving; what riot they make over the whole house; it is enough to disgust any respectable person who comes near them.”

“Sir,” said Telemachus, “as regards your question, so long as my father was here it was well with us and with the house, but the gods in their displeasure have willed it otherwise, and have hidden him away more closely than mortal man was ever yet hidden.  I could have borne it better even though he were dead, if he had fallen with his men before Troy, or had died with friends around him when the days of his fighting were done; for then the Achaeans would have built a mound over his ashes, and I should